You got people like this around you.
Country's full of them now.
People walking around all day long, every minute of the day...worried about EVERYTHING!!

Worried about THE AIR.
Worried about THE WATER.
Worried about THE SOIL.
Worried about insecticides, pesticides, food additives, carcinogens.
Worried about radon gas.
Worried about asbestos.
Worried about saving endangered species.

Let me tell you about endangered species, alright?
Saving endangered species
It's just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature.
It's arrogant meddling.
It's what got us in trouble in the first place.
Doesn't anybody understand that?
Interfering with nature.

Over 90%...over, WAY OVER, 90% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet, ever lived, are GONE.
They're extinct!
We didn't kill them ALL.
They just disappeared.
That's what nature does.
They disappear these days at the rate of 25 a day.
And I mean regardless of our behavior.
Irrespective of how we act on this planet, 25 species that were here today will be gone tomorrow.
Let them go gracefully.
Leave nature alone.
Haven't we done enough?

We’re so self-important. So self-important.
Everybody’s going to save something now.
Save the TREES!
Save the BEES!
Save the WHALES!
Save those SNAILS!

And the greatest arrogance of all:
Save the PLANET!
What?
Are these people fucking kidding me?

Save the planet?
We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet.
We haven't learned how to care for one another.
We're gonna save the fuckin' planet?

I’m getting tired of that shit.
Tired of that shit.
Tired.
I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day.
I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists.
These white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths.
People trying to make the world safe for Volvos.

Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet.
They don't care about the planet.
Not in the abstract they don’t.
You know what they’re interested in?
A clean place to live.
Their own habitat.
They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced.
Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet.
Nothing wrong with the planet.
The planet is fine.
The PEOPLE are fucked.
Difference! Difference!
The planet is fine.
Compared to the people the planet is doing great.

Been here 4 and a half billion years.
Did you ever think about the arithmetic?
Planet has been here 4.5 billion years.
We've been here what?
100 thousand?, maybe 200 thousand?
And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years?
200 years versus 4 and a half billion?
And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a threat?
That somehow we're going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little Blue-Green ball that's just a-floatin' around the Sun?

The planet has been through a lot worse than us.
Been through all kinds of things worse than us.
Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages …
And we think some plastic bags?
And some aluminum cans?
Are going to make a difference?

The planet isn’t going anywhere.
WE are!
We’re going away.
Pack your shit, folks.
We’re going away.
And we won’t leave much of a trace, either.
Thank God for that.
Maybe a little Styrofoam … Maybe.
Little Styrofoam.
The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone.
Just another failed mutation.
Just another closed-end biological mistake.
An evolutionary cul-de-sac.
The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
A surface nuisance.

You want to know how the planet's doing?
Ask those people in Pompeii who are frozen into position from volcanic ash.
How the planet's doing??

Want to know if the planet's alright?
Ask the people in Mexico City or Armenia (or a hundred other places) buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble if they "Feel like a threat to the planet this week?"

How about those people in Kilauea, Hawaii who built their homes next to an active volcano...and wonder why they have "lava in the living room?".

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does.
It’s a self-correcting system.
The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed.
And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm:
"The Earth plus Plastic".

The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic.
Plastic came OUT of the earth.
The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children.
Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself.
Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us.

Could be the answer to our age-old philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

I'm not often clairvoyant, but it happened to me again on the morning of Captain "Sully's" historic flight in Jan 2009.

It was 5am and snowing very hard. Had just left the house to drive to Newark Airport for a flight to Detroit. Drove 1/2 mile and pulled into the parking lot of NY Waterways Ferry (the same ferry company that rescued Sully's plane about 6 hours later).

I sat there for a few minutes considering if I should take a later flight. My headlights were pointing out into the blackness over the river. The only thing I could see was snow flying sideways. I thought to myself "Damn, I would hate to be in a plane that had to ditch into that cold-assed river TODAY!"

So, i drove home and went back to bed for a few hours and took a later flight. When I left the 2nd time the sun had risen and the sky was clear.

Flew to Detroit without a hitch. When we landed and were taxiing to the gate, the guy across the aisle was checking Twitter and said "a plane just landed in the Hudson River."

It was in the exact location my headlights had pointed to a few hours earlier and where I had my premonition.